Piercing rejection

After slow start, writer’s success snowballed

The Visitation by Frank Peretti
The Visitation by Frank Peretti

— It’s hard to believe but, at one point, best-selling author Frank Peretti couldn’t find a publisher willing to take a chance on his first novel. Even after it was picked up by Crossway Books in

1986, This Present Darkness languished on bookstore shelves for two years before capturing the public’s attention.

Working at a snow ski factory in Seattle to make ends meet, the aspiring author would call his publisher frequently to ask how many copies had been sold. Most days the numbers weren’t encouraging. But early in 1988, Peretti called, and the publisher reported a good month, with 4,000 copies sold.

“Then I called the next month and he said we had sold about 20,000 copies, and as the months went by it was like it came out of a slingshot and just went crazy,” Peretti said.

It wasn’t long before Peretti was able to quit the factory job, thanks to an advance payment for a sequel.

“That’s when I became a full-time writer,” he said. “I woke up in the morning and didn’t have to go to the factory, and I sat down to write.” This Present Darkness and its sequel, Piercing the Darkness, went on to sell more than 3.5 million copies. Along with his other titles, Peretti has sold about 15 million books. His latest, Illusion, came out this week. It’s his first solo novel in seven years. His last, House, was a collaboration with fellow best-selling author Ted Dekker.

In the interim, Peretti said, he dabbled in film making. A few of his books, including Hangman’s Curse and The Visitation as well as House, were made into movies. None were box-office smashes, but Peretti was apparently hooked.

“I wanted to be a film director and was pursuing that with all my heart,” he said.

He discovered, he said, that “it’s really hard to make a movie.”

So he returned to writing, wiser than before, he said. And writing seems to have been Peretti’s calling all along, even though he had a string of jobs along the way - musician, carpenter, minister and more. But he never found the peace in those jobs that he has when he is writing.

“By the time I wrote This Present Darkness I knew I was supposed to be a writer,” he said.

Realizing a calling and finding success at it, however, are two different things, as Peretti discovered after shopping around for a publisher and facing rejection after rejection.

“I remember crying. I felt life was at a dead end,” he said. “I was doubting myself and I had this book all written and nobody wanted it.”

But success came, and each subsequent Peretti novel has been eagerly awaited by his fans.

Although many of his novels had themes of spiritual warfare - of angels and demons or monsters - Illusion is a supernatural story of another kind. At its heart, it’s a love story between magicians Dane and Mandy, who’ve been married 40 years when tragedy strikes. Mandy is killed in a car wreck and the two lovebirds are separated ... or are they?

Peretti said the book has two levels - the love story and the religious undertones.

“It’s our longing to find out who we are and where we belong and find our rest with God,” he said. “There are those who have that hunger. Is there someone out there who cares for me and put me here for a reason? That’s the sub-theme of the book.”

The author said Illusion is a reflection of his own 40-year marriage.

“It brought me and my dear wife, Barbara, closer together,” he said. “There’s a lot of us in the book.”

Readers hoping for more spiritual warfare, like that found in This Present Darkness, might be disappointed that Illusion isn’t filled with angels and demons. But Peretti said he has found other story lines to follow as he has grown older.

“The spiritual warfare, that was my grand opus, and that’s great,” he said. “But I’ve lived a long time and I’ve thought about other things. I always write from where I am in my life and what I’m thinking about. I was 60 years old when I wrote this book, so I’m writing from my experience.”

Peretti made his break into Christian fiction when the selections on store shelves for the genre were thin - not the big business it is today.

“When I was first trying, no one took [Christian] fiction seriously,” he said. “Most of the publishers who rejected it said, ‘We don’t do fiction.’ ... I felt like a leper.”

Peretti is certainly well known to Christian readers, but he has broadened his approach throughout the years to attract a wider range of readers, not just the churchgoers. Even though his books all start out with a Christian theme, he said, “I don’t write Christian novels. I’m a Christian who writes novels.”

It’s a distinction that makes his books more universally acceptable, he said. Instead of pounding readers over the head with an overtly religious message, he weaves Christian themes throughout the story in a more organic way.

“Truth is truth and these things can be explored by a whole cross section of people,” he said. “I approach it from a Christian viewpoint. I make my pitch and people can do what they want with it.”

With the completion of Illusion, Peretti is already tinkering with another idea but said it’s just an inkling for now. And for those holding out hope that This Present Darkness will find its way to the big screen, Peretti has bad news.

“I don’t really see that happening,” he said. “It’s a wonderful dream, but no.”

Religion, Pages 12 on 03/10/2012

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